The name Tunday has an unfortunate story – The person who started this shop 125 years ago fell from a height & lost his hand. A person without a hand used to be called ‘tunda’ in local dialect. So when he started selling kababs they started bein g called Tunday kababs. Who knew that this unfortunate incident wud lead to a name which wud become a brand a century later.

The Shop has an open kitchen. As u enter the shop & cross the kitchen, there r a few seats. But for the rest of the guests there is the open night sky as a roof. The boundary wall of the common market walkway acts as a table, food is served on them & guests enjoy the food standing on the walkway & eating from the plates kept on the boundary wall !!!!

Strongly recommend that u eat the food there & not get it delivered or packed. There is a huge difference in the taste – due to the nature of teh food.

Pls do not expect trained waiters. If u treat them well as normal human beings, they will respond exceedingly well. If u r a regular & tip them, u will b treated like a guest to their house. If u r in a bad mood or just a non cheerful mood & that is reflected in ur communication, or even if he hasjust been maltreated by another customer, don’t b surprised to get a cold reaction from these guys.

We enjoyed some very good mutton korma, excellent murg kali mirch , delicious Lucknowi Dum Biryani & their signature Galawati Kababs with warqi paratha. Tried the mutton sheekh but that was a dampener.

Detailed description – In case u have the time to enjoy reading:

To start with, we had Murg kali mirch – it was marinated & tandoored Chicken pieces sautéed in butter with kali mirch. Super juicy, rustic, robust, hot & spicy & very very tastyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. We suddenly realized that we were spotted finger licking!!!! This was paired with a super soft & paper thin rumali roti.

the unexpected good Murg Kali Mirch

Then we had the Galawati Kabab also referred to as Tunday kabab.

Story of Galawati Kabab – There was an Old Nawab who was a big foodie. With age his teeth started falling off. So he called in his Royal Chef & urged him to make something that was as tasty as the rest of the food but good enough to be managed with few / no teeth. The Chef over a period of time discovered this Kabab.

These kababs r served with warqi paranthas also called ulte tawa ka parantha coz they r made on a inverted Kadhai – the paranthas taste very good on their own, soft thruout & the mid part is slightly browned with mild cracks on them.

warqi parantha or ulte tawa ka parantha

I Lucknow there were two shops when I last visited – one in the old city & the other in the new city. Now a few more have opened up. The original shop in the old city is situated in such a narrow gali that even two Cycle rickshaws have to maneuver to cross each other. The old shop, we were told, had a Wood fired Chulha & Copper tawa vs. LPG fired Oven & normal iron tawa in the new shop. The flavor of the former was surely more smoky & the feel more rustic.

We were very surprised to find here – one of the best Lucknowi Dum Biryani in Delhi NCR (leaving apart the likes of the Legendary Dum Pukth or the new Superstar Kainoosh). Soft, melt in the mouth, very flavorful long independent strands of rice in two colors – white & yellow (kesar). The meat was super soft & had an outstanding texture. However, I must mention that the taste of Biryani mutton is surely better at Arsalan Kolkata. In fact the Biryani meat at Tunday had a mild refrigerated (old meat) smell which is just not expected from a family of famous Chefs.

Lucknowi Dum Biryani

Also tried Mutton korma with roti. Excellent – no twist, nothing different than the best of the Kormas I have had so far & exactly as expected. The meats in the Korma were super soft melt in the mouth – as expected when cooked with the spices in low heat for long.

the excellent mutton korma

Mutton Sheekh kabab was stiff, not melt in the mouth & quite dissapointing texture. The taste was good but overall Karim’s or Al Kausher’s sheekh kabab is way way better.

sub optimal mutton sheekh kabab

Overall – Maybe the food here is too heavy for Summers but it is surely too good for winters. Will revisit few more times this winter to try out the other dishes.

Note:My foodie friend wrote on YUMMRAJ facebook page – Glad you liked it. I wasn’t as lucky. My biryani was all chewy hard pieces of mutton served by an arrogant guy in their Gurgaon outlet. Had their kebab combo at Indirapuram outlet. 3 servings were well prepared, but one extra that we ordered later came with burnt kebabs :(